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Alex Dolin, stress management coach

sacrifice

Worship is an essential part of spiritual formation.Spiritual formation is about our relationship with God. Abiding in Christ, means living with Jesus in our lives, hanging out with him, making the choice to obey him! The Bible tells us that we are to worship God by sacrificing our whole being to God. We are to do his will and not conform to this world.

“Worship” has many facets, many levels to it. It is not merely singing praises. There is a lot more to it. To summarize “Let’s talk about worship,” we see that “worship” is about acknowledging and knowing the Lord, adoration and loving Him, and action in service to God. The word has several meanings and there are many ways to worship God. This is what we are discussing today, the many ways to express our worship to God in our worship services and in life.

Inregards to …the first directive that strikes my attention is thatwe are to “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise…” The idea is to praiseGod all the time, without ceasing. In our worship services this means that whenthe singing is over, the worship is still happening. We worship God when wegive our offerings. We worship him in prayer of praise. We worship him inlearning from his Word. We worship him in fellowship with others. Also I mustnote that our entire life can be an act of worship. We must not compartmentalizeour worship to Sunday morning instead continually worship God.

Thesecond directive is the repetitive idea of “offering up a sacrifice” similar to. Praise is not about making ourselves feel good and energized, but it isabout worshiping, giving to God. It is not entertainment for your own soul, buta gift to God, a sacrifice. In our worship services, we must remember thatchurch is not merely for us. Sure, God blesses us and fills us. Our entire lifeis about worship. It is not always going to be easy to worship God. But wesacrifice for God. And he is pleased with us when we do.

Thethird directive is “do not neglect doing good and sharing.” (This is anothersacrifice!) We can and should please God through sharing our wealth, money,time, energy, blessings, etc. But we also share life together with other Christians. We share our time, our sacrifices, food,fellowship, but also our tragedies, our prayer requests. I think also that wemust not only share with other Christians, but also with those who are sick,those who are in need, those who need Jesus, and those who are not into thechurch. It is good, right, and a sacrifice (of sorts) that pleases God when weshare the Gospel truth!